While a staggered worldwide launch for EA's new SimCity wasn't enough to prevent substantial launch problems in North America yesterday, the publisher is projecting confidence that it will have the issues fixed in time for the launch in Europe, Australia, and Japan on Thursday and the UK on Friday.

"Due to the high demand for SimCity, Origin has experienced delays impacting a small percentage of users. We’re working non-stop to resolve," the company tweeted on the official Origin Twitter account yesterday. "We’re making changes to prevent further issues, and are confident that Origin will be stable for international launches later this week," it tweeted further.

EA does seem to be making every effort to reduce widely reported server wait times and stability issues with the game. Two new game servers were launched yesterday afternoon, and the company rolled out a new server update today that it says should resolve problems with city loading, trading, and tutorial freezes.

The SimCity Twitter account is suggesting that players running into problems loading their cities switch to other servers, but it fails to mention that existing saved games and cities-in-progress are inextricably tied to the server they were created on (though that issue is directly addressed in an official FAQ regarding server waiting rooms).

Meanwhile, complaints about the game's "sometimes online" features continue. One popular thread on Reddit discusses the loss of a successful city and $2 million of in-game money thanks to server synchronization errors. A flood of 174 one-star reviews on Amazon have dragged down the game's average rating at the online retailer, with many reviewers complaining about not being able to log in. Complaints continue to fillupthreads on EA's official forums as well.

Polygon decided to officially lower its prerelease review score of 9.5/10 down to an 8/10 after encountering disconnection errors and city corruption post-launch. Dorkly's getting in on the act with a timely comic making fun of the launch situation.

All these problems may well become a distant memory, but for now, forcing the traditionally single-player SimCity into an online infrastructure hasn't been the painless process EA promised.

Promoted Comments

You show me a game with an online component whose launch hasn't been a total fucking debacle of biblical proportions, and I'll show you Santa Claus. Neither of those things exist. Heavily online-focused games have had lol-tastic catastrophic launches dating back to Ultima Online. Shit, even before that.

The primary problem is that it's impossible to accurately judge launch day loads, and even if it were possible it's economically unfeasible to scale an infrastructure to handle launch loads and ALSO to handle regular production loads. You either sink too much money into launch infrastructure and are left holding unneeded equipment, or you screw up the launch and things eventually fall in line with the infrastructure you DO have.

"The cloud" and outside elastic compute resources are most decidedly *NOT* a viable solution, either, at least not for almost every single game out there.

115 Reader Comments

The other downside to these server issues is that it seems demand exceeded expectations (or at least expected server load), which hints at the fact that this game might be selling well. If EA sees this as a success, they certainly aren't going to feel like this new direction is a bad thing, and the SimCity of ole is probably gone forever.

If "everyone knows" this game is crap, who in the hell is overloading the servers. Last I checked SimCity did not have a Modern Warfare-ish fanboy following that would buy the next sequel regardless of it's critical acclaim. I've heard nothing but bad, and don't intend to buy until the game is improved (and likely lumped together with all available DLC for a tenth of the combined retail price).

So, was not having a database that would allow player data to migrate from server to server an oversight? I guess it ties in to AaronLeeR's comment about them not anticipating that much traffic (see below...or above).

AaronLeeR wrote:

The other downside to these server issues is that it seems demand exceeded expectations (or at least expected server load), which hints at the fact that this game might be selling well. If EA sees this as a success, they certainly aren't going to feel like this new direction is a bad thing, and the SimCity of ole is probably gone forever.

So, was not having a database that would allow player data to migrate from server to server an oversight?

I think it's more a case of transportable cities being hard to do when existing cities are already tied in to existing regions in many important ways. A balancing issue. It's the same reason characters can't easily switch servers in many MMOs, I'd gather.

So, was not having a database that would allow player data to migrate from server to server an oversight? I guess it ties in to AaronLeeR's comment about them not anticipating that much traffic (see below...or above).

No, the problem is that your city is linked with neighboring cities, so you can't move it to a different server.

Not sure it makes sense to lower your review score because of the issues, they will obviously be fixed in the not so distant future so you will be forced to change it again. You are better off not scoring it and giving it a textual "wait and see" rating.

Didn't EA come out and state that they were going to have no issues for launch? Seems entirely acceptable to change your score depending on what you were promised, and what you recieved. See here

Not sure it makes sense to lower your review score because of the issues, they will obviously be fixed in the not so distant future so you will be forced to change it again. You are better off not scoring it and giving it a textual "wait and see" rating.

This is a good point. Similarly, is it right for a reviewer to retroactively increase a review score if a game developer releases patches that address things the reviewer didn't like with the release version?

Not sure it makes sense to lower your review score because of the issues, they will obviously be fixed in the not so distant future so you will be forced to change it again. You are better off not scoring it and giving it a textual "wait and see" rating.

That's definitely not how it should work at all. The game is available to purchase now - the review should reflect the play experience one would expect had he or she purchased the title and played it. Holding off on a review until later with the promise of things being better is... a bad idea.

This is a symptom of an industry-wide problem. Steam, Origin... they all choke on major launch days. Every time. Why are all these online services utterly incapable of learning from experience? Is their infrastructure too brittle to scale? Why can't they say "We know that launch day for DudeBro 3 is going to be a huge spike, so rent a ton of extra instances from Amazon?"

So, was not having a database that would allow player data to migrate from server to server an oversight?

I think it's more a case of transportable cities being hard to do when existing cities are already tied in to existing regions in many important ways. A balancing issue. It's the same reason characters can't easily switch servers in many MMOs, I'd gather.

Simple solution: copy the city, "abandon" the original (i understand the game has a mechanism for this) so another player can take control in the future, and give the user the new copy on another server.

So, was not having a database that would allow player data to migrate from server to server an oversight? I guess it ties in to AaronLeeR's comment about them not anticipating that much traffic (see below...or above).

No, the problem is that your city is linked with neighboring cities, so you can't move it to a different server.

Yeah, the regions are more like instanced dungeons than save games. You get a slot (city) and start building, but if you delete the game from your list, the city you created still exists, but has been abandoned. If other people were working on their own cities in the same region, their stuff is still there and someone can come in and reclaim your abandoned city.

I'd imagine there has to be some sort of reaper that destroys the instance when all the cities have been abandoned.

If "everyone knows" this game is crap, who in the hell is overloading the servers. Last I checked SimCity did not have a Modern Warfare-ish fanboy following that would buy the next sequel regardless of it's critical acclaim. I've heard nothing but bad, and don't intend to buy until the game is improved (and likely lumped together with all available DLC for a tenth of the combined retail price).

Who are these people?

I seriously doubt they will have problems elsewhere. I'd lay money that it was a bandwidth issue on Origin as EA dropped a 6 gigabyte patch for Battlefield 3 yesterday as well.

Reviewers need to start putting out reviews now, with scores that reflect the current state of gameplay. EA needs to know loud and clear that this kind of launch is unacceptable. Honestly it makes me wonder about journalistic integrity that there have been no reviews so far. How much do you want to bet that lots of review sites are receiving pretty please emails from EA asking to hold off on publishing their reviews?

So, was not having a database that would allow player data to migrate from server to server an oversight? I guess it ties in to AaronLeeR's comment about them not anticipating that much traffic (see below...or above).

No, the problem is that your city is linked with neighboring cities, so you can't move it to a different server.

Yeah, the regions are more like instanced dungeons than save games. You get a slot (city) and start building, but if you delete the game from your list, the city you created still exists, but has been abandoned. If other people were working on their own cities in the same region, their stuff is still there and someone can come in and reclaim your abandoned city.

I'd imagine there has to be some sort of reaper that destroys the instance when all the cities have been abandoned.

This sounds like the plot of a pretty awesome movie.

Anyone know what the day two usability is like? There were day one issues, sure, but that isn't really going to stop me buying this in the long run (unless they turn into day 84 issues, but I couldn't imagine even EA mismanaging things that badly).

If "everyone knows" this game is crap, who in the hell is overloading the servers. Last I checked SimCity did not have a Modern Warfare-ish fanboy following that would buy the next sequel regardless of it's critical acclaim. I've heard nothing but bad, and don't intend to buy until the game is improved (and likely lumped together with all available DLC for a tenth of the combined retail price).

Who are these people?

"Everyone" hates McDonald's, but they still rake in money hand over fist. Who goes to McDonald's? I have learned over the years that the louder the complaints, the smaller the group.

If "everyone knows" this game is crap, who in the hell is overloading the servers. Last I checked SimCity did not have a Modern Warfare-ish fanboy following that would buy the next sequel regardless of it's critical acclaim. I've heard nothing but bad, and don't intend to buy until the game is improved (and likely lumped together with all available DLC for a tenth of the combined retail price).

Who are these people?

"Everyone" hates McDonald's, but they still rake in money hand over fist. Who goes to McDonald's? I have learned over the years that the louder the complaints, the smaller the group.

I actually like the Origin service (runs for cover)

installs the older games (like command and conquer) with all the patches and setups to work in Windows 7 x64

You show me a game with an online component whose launch hasn't been a total fucking debacle of biblical proportions, and I'll show you Santa Claus. Neither of those things exist. Heavily online-focused games have had lol-tastic catastrophic launches dating back to Ultima Online. Shit, even before that.

The primary problem is that it's impossible to accurately judge launch day loads, and even if it were possible it's economically unfeasible to scale an infrastructure to handle launch loads and ALSO to handle regular production loads. You either sink too much money into launch infrastructure and are left holding unneeded equipment, or you screw up the launch and things eventually fall in line with the infrastructure you DO have.

"The cloud" and outside elastic compute resources are most decidedly *NOT* a viable solution, either, at least not for almost every single game out there.

This is a symptom of an industry-wide problem. Steam, Origin... they all choke on major launch days. Every time. Why are all these online services utterly incapable of learning from experience? Is their infrastructure too brittle to scale? Why can't they say "We know that launch day for DudeBro 3 is going to be a huge spike, so rent a ton of extra instances from Amazon?"

Edit:spellingfix

Likely due to the massive amount of testing involved and the problem trying to turn it off again. Granted, EA probably should have delivered files from Amazon (that would have been easy) but the actual game servers? You need to test it, make sure it works well with everything else you have, then make sure you can quickly and accurately move everything off Amazon and back onto your own servers once the load decreases, while maintaining the linked cities. The amount of work that would go into that would be crazy, and all just to take the edge off a couple of day spike in usage.

I imagine EA built for what they thought was normal usage, looked at actual usage and have rolled out servers to meet that demand (that they could get extra servers running within a day is incredible, it seems planned to me). It makes sense, ignoring that it makes for a shitty launch.

You show me a game with an online component whose launch hasn't been a total fucking debacle of biblical proportions, and I'll show you Santa Claus. Neither of those things exist. Heavily online-focused games have had lol-tastic catastrophic launches dating back to Ultima Online. Shit, even before that.

The primary problem is that it's impossible to accurately judge launch day loads, and even if it were possible it's economically unfeasible to scale an infrastructure to handle launch loads and ALSO to handle regular production loads. You either sink too much money into launch infrastructure and are left holding unneeded equipment, or you screw up the launch and things eventually fall in line with the infrastructure you DO have.

"The cloud" and outside elastic compute resources are most decidedly *NOT* a viable solution, either, at least not for almost every single game out there.

The game no, but origin's services could certainly be built in such a way that allows it to utilize 3rd party services during peak usage. Assuming you can predict the peak usage with enough time in advance to spin up an instance.

EDIT: Origin seems to be fixed at this point as far as I can tell anyway. It's the simcity servers that are failing now.

Sometimes I wonder if game companies do this on purpose, trolling for headlines or putting out an unspoken statements that says "Look how popular our game is! All the players rushing to get in are crashing the servers!"

I imagine EA built for what they thought was normal usage, looked at actual usage and have rolled out servers to meet that demand (that they could get extra servers running within a day is incredible, it seems planned to me). It makes sense, ignoring that it makes for a shitty launch.

EA knows how many copies they sold/shipped to retailers. That's how much usage they need to build support for. It's not that hard to figure out...

"The cloud" and outside elastic compute resources are most decidedly *NOT* a viable solution, either, at least not for almost every single game out there.

My kneejerk reaction was "why aren't they using a more elastic infrastructure, given that they had to have known day-one demand would far outstrip the steady-state, resulting in bad PR". Plus, if the game goes big, or the game settles at a lower steady-state than they expected, having flexibility in their server commitments would allow them to minimize server costs while still serving their user base. Finally, the co-dependent pieces of this game are much smaller (however many cities can fit in a region), compared to the complexity of your average MMO shard.

Personally, I'd be interested in a more thorough discussion (article?) of why games like this can't use that kind of solution.

"The cloud" and outside elastic compute resources are most decidedly *NOT* a viable solution, either, at least not for almost every single game out there.

Not for all games, no, but if ever there were a game that seems tailored to elastic computing, it'd be this one. We're not talking about latency-sensitive multiplayer here -- the thing reportedly does fine without a connection for twenty minutes or so.

You show me a game with an online component whose launch hasn't been a total fucking debacle of biblical proportions, and I'll show you Santa Claus. Neither of those things exist. Heavily online-focused games have had lol-tastic catastrophic launches dating back to Ultima Online. Shit, even before that.

The primary problem is that it's impossible to accurately judge launch day loads, and even if it were possible it's economically unfeasible to scale an infrastructure to handle launch loads and ALSO to handle regular production loads. You either sink too much money into launch infrastructure and are left holding unneeded equipment, or you screw up the launch and things eventually fall in line with the infrastructure you DO have.

"The cloud" and outside elastic compute resources are most decidedly *NOT* a viable solution, either, at least not for almost every single game out there.

But as a customer, why should I care? They offer a service, we pay for the service, they need to provide the service. If customers don't complain then we will continue to have gaming blackouts at game launches forever.

So, was not having a database that would allow player data to migrate from server to server an oversight? I guess it ties in to AaronLeeR's comment about them not anticipating that much traffic (see below...or above).

No, the problem is that your city is linked with neighboring cities, so you can't move it to a different server.

Yeah, the regions are more like instanced dungeons than save games. You get a slot (city) and start building, but if you delete the game from your list, the city you created still exists, but has been abandoned. If other people were working on their own cities in the same region, their stuff is still there and someone can come in and reclaim your abandoned city.

I'd imagine there has to be some sort of reaper that destroys the instance when all the cities have been abandoned.

This sounds like the plot of a pretty awesome movie.

Awesome is subjective, but the movie (well, two part mini-series) was already made. It is called the Langoliers.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.